New Publication - Toward best practices for empowering ethnobotany in digital herbaria

As museums and institutions digitize millions of plant specimens, ethnobotanical information associated with them is becoming increasingly accessible. Important for both science and culture, biocultural data like traditional plant uses, names, and management practices by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), can be difficult to find or use because there are no shared standards for organizing the information. Researchers from around the globe, including HUH Director of Collections, Dr. Michaela Schmull, have come together in this new publication in Plants, People, Planet to provide key considerations for future work and coordinating best practices among global herbaria to locate, acknowledge, and responsibly share information in partnership with the communities where the knowledge originates.

Hart, R., Fonseca-Kruel, V., Dalcin, E., da Silva Luís Alexandre, E., Pace, M., Schmull, M., Beltran-Rodríguez, L., Murguía-Romero, M., Flores-Camargo, D. G., Mapes-Sánchez, C., Nesbitt, M., Romero, C., Townesmith, A., Salick, J., McAlvay, A., Otero-Walker, K. R., Balick, M. J., Golan, J., Hoffman, B., … Vandebroek, I. (2025). Repositories of biocultural diversity: Toward best practices for empowering ethnobotany in digital herbaria. Plants, People, Planet, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.70052